Gai sensei
by Commander Zia
Summary: /A Gai character study\\ Still, he wasn't complaining. He was happy as their beloved Gai-sensei, and what else mattered, really?


4th post of the epic 'summer dropbox Naruto fanfiction cleaning'. Found this junker with quite a few grammar mistakes, though I think I managed to clear them all up. I also got the ages screwy with the Kyuubi attack, I claimed Gai was sixteen at the time when he was only fourteen, as with Kakashi. I decided for a 'fifteen' comprimise, as it is theoretically possible with Kishi's vague ageing charts. Anyways, try not to puke, I think it's decent, at any rate.

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**G** a i - **S** e n s e i

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When Gai was younger, when he was a chuunin and spent his days killing and bleeding and watching his comrades die he'd never thought of becoming a teacher. Teaching was for those who were too weak or too afraid to ever become real ninja. They had experience, no doubt, but that didn't make a difference. Everyone had experience. Genin had some experience, they just weren't tall enough to be listened to. He was a fighter, a taijutsu ANBU machine, a shinobi tool. He wasn't some failure, he wasn't the kind of sad excuse for a ninja who could sit back and show fresh genin how to throw kunai. He wasn't the kind of person who could have any life off of the battle field, he just wasn't.

Gai doesn't remember exactly when he chose to become a ninja. He'd been small, back when he'd still had a father and a mother and they'd still spent all their days out of the house. It took him years after they left to piece together their lives, working from scratch with only their names and their faces. It took him hours of searching old records to find their specific mates, the choice few they spent most of their days with. He could suddenly feel the understanding as if a window had been opened, because now he knew, knew why they were always fighting, knew the reason his father hated him so much was because he wasn't really his father at all. Nevertheless it took almost four more years for the small part of his heart he kept locked away to accept the fact that it _wasn't his fault_.

When he finally entered ANBU there had only ever been two shinobi to enter at a younger age then he, and he could feel the stares at him and was glad that he had to spend most of his time wearing his bird mask. It was an elegant bird, some kind of a swan, and he liked it. Its markings were thin, leaving the mask much whiter than most, and contrasting with his long black hair it made him seem ghostly, a black and white creature only stained by the color of blood. He liked it, the clean-cut way ANBU was set up; it was a system meant to keep the operatives sane and it worked miracles, every single one of the battle hardened ninjas learning to slip away into the back of their minds and become slaughter machines with a snap of the fingers. It was so easy to forget, when they could hide behind a mask.

It was at age fifteen, after the Kyuubi attack on the village, in the hospital emergency ward that he finally met the grey-haired prodigy he hadn't seen since his academy days. The room was packed, ANBU and chuunin and civilians, the attack on Konoha eating up hospital space faster than it burned down the houses. The man had been sitting quietly in the corner, his fingers gripping the sides of his chair so that his veins popped and showed blue against his pale skin. He still wore his ANBU mask over his face, but the fluffy grey hair that fell about his shoulders limply was a giveaway, and he couldn't help but walk over to him. He had called the boy's name a few times before he gave up and sat beside him, not bothering to stand up as they called his name because the bleeding gashes up his arms could wait. Somewhere in his mind he remembered how the man had been trained by the Yondaime Hokage, but he too was still in a state of shell-shock and so he just sat there, the two of them staring ahead at the wall blankly for hours and hours until the nurses finally noticed them and whisked them away, and the grey-haired ANBU was gone again.

The grey-haired man soon became a necessity for him, though it took him years to figure out why. Every day he'd search the man out at the memorial stone, he'd shout and grin and challenge him like he'd done with his teammates in his genin days, and he'd drag the man to ramen and to bars and out to anywhere but the cemetery he was so fond of. A year and the man was almost okay, but still he kept it up, because this was for him as much as for the lonely man he followed like a puppy; because he enjoyed having someone he could dump on without worrying about the consequences. It had been years since he'd been able to do that.

It wasn't until his seventh year with ANBU to decide that he should take on a team. He didn't know why, but something inside him said 'let's get a team' and so he did. He signed up directly with the Hokage and he'd never quite forget the look on his face; would always remember the look of shock and surprise and whole-hearted relief he'd received. He still couldn't tell exactly why he'd done it, even after so many years of thinking of his team as the family he'd never had. He'd just felt, somewhere, that he should escape. It was only two weeks later, at the first training seminar for future jounin instructors, that he realized Kakashi was also planning on becoming a teacher. The fact made him smile. Maybe the jounin could find a way to escape as well.

It's been so many years he can't remember everything that's happened in his life. He can't tell you of every single birthday like his students can and he doesn't remember the color of his teammate's eyes or even his sensei's full name. But he doesn't mind. He has long learned, has taught himself, to live in the present, and so live in the present he does. He makes sure to take a run each morning and to train because he wants to, not because he has to, and he still makes sure to drag Kakashi out for ramen whenever they have time. He takes his team out for dinner every Wednesday night, and together they laugh and smile and talk about the wild dreams they have with the others dressed as chickens or as missing-nin or of having their own teams when they're older. Once Neji asked him why he'd decided to take on a team, and in the end Lee had to come to his rescue, chastising the Hyuuga for thinking that their beloved Gai-sensei could be anything but that. At this Gai grinned, because it really did seem that way, didn't it? He'd never planned for this happening, and he'd never really wanted a team or looked up to his sensei, he'd chosen to take on a team as an act of impulse. Still, he wasn't complaining. He was happy as their beloved Gai-sensei, and what else mattered, really?


End file.
